Authentication is an integral aspect of many different systems, for example, social media networks, email systems, payment systems, mobile commerce systems and so on.
Fraudulent use of a user's identity and improper access has massive associated costs and other implications. For example, credit card fraud costs banks time, money and has become an increased problem with cyber-crime, phishing schemes, and other programs designed to take advantage of fraudulent credit cards or means for payment.
Additionally, due to the scale of card fraud, issuing banks tend to implement quite aggressive strategies in order to combat the problem. This, however, leads to high false positive rates that cause extreme inconveniences to cardholders and merchants resulting in high operational costs (including resolution management) to the issuer. As an additional consequence, high volumes of false positives may also prevent the issuer from declining further transactions, leading to additional losses.
Existing risk-engine strategies do not have the benefit of information on user generated information (including online complaints regarding merchants, hidden charges, billing errors) and the real-time status of the cardholder, they are not well suited to cross-border transactions where behavioral and historical patterns do not fit the norm.
Moreover, without verification in real time at the point of sale between the various players in the ecosystem (e.g., banks, card companies, merchants, consumers), real-time fraud detection/prevention has been challenging, to enable effectively.
Therefore, there is a need for a new solution whereby all parties to the financial ecosystem may benefit from user generated information and real time verification.
Similarly, new authentication solutions are similarly required for many other applications to tackle the costs due to fraudulent use. For example, the cost of someone “hacking” a social media account such as a Facebook™ or a Twitter™ account could be destroyed relationships and diminished revenue in the case of a corporate social media account.
This background information is provided to reveal information believed by the applicant to be of possible relevance to the present invention. No admission is necessarily intended, nor should be construed, that any of the preceding information constitutes prior art against the present invention.